[Xu Yinyin POV] — The Trap
She hadn't slept properly in two days.
The moment she saw that message — "HELLO AGAIN, XYN" —
her instincts kicked in like a match on dry fuel.
"They want me back in the game?"
"Then fine. Let's play."
She slipped into her hidden workspace — a tiny, soundproof basement lined with monitors, buried under the guest room closet.
There, she created a virus. Beautiful. Terrifying.
Not to destroy.
But to entice.
"I'll give them something they can't resist."
She designed a fake breach — a half-open backdoor with just enough vulnerability to look real, but layered with tracer hooks and digital mirrors.
Anyone who touched it?
She'd know their IP, location, operating system, heart rate, and deepest regrets.
"Come on, little rats," she whispered, uploading the bait.
"Come chase the ghost."
[Lu Zeyan POV] — The Suspicion
Meanwhile, upstairs, Zeyan stared at a report.
His cybersecurity division had picked up a strange anomaly:
A spike in encrypted activity, pinging dangerously close to one of his old abandoned servers.
He blinked.
"This code looks… familiar."
Not in the sense that he'd written it.
In the sense that it felt like someone brilliant had.
Like a whisper of something he couldn't name.
Something he'd seen in flashes… on his wife's laptop.
He didn't want to believe it.
But he also couldn't ignore it anymore.
He opened a private trace file and began writing a line of code:
trace_signature(XYN.pattern)
run_search(local_network_only)
silent_mode=True
[Back to Yinyin] — Let the Game Begin
The trap went live.
Almost immediately, two signatures bit.
She tracked one back to Europe. Another to Brazil.
"Old enemies. Same hunger."
She let them enter. Gave them access to "sensitive" fake files: blueprints, dark net passwords, identity sales.
She watched them open it like greedy wolves…
And then—
Click.
Trace back complete.
Full breach activated.
She smiled coldly.
"Gotcha."
And just before she shut them out completely, she wrote one line on their screen:
"You thought I got rusty?
XYN says hi."
[Meanwhile… Lu Zeyan]
His trace came back.
Only one match.
Hidden under layers of custom encryption.
Buried so deeply, he wouldn't have found it unless he knew what he was looking for.
It led him to…
A laptop in his own home.
His fingers paused above the keyboard.
He didn't open it.
Not yet.
He closed his eyes.
"Yinyin… What are you hiding?"
But instead of confronting her…
He began building his own silent watcher.
He would watch.
And wait.
Until she told him the truth.